Re: Ultimate Goals in Olympia

From: skrenta@pbm.com (Rich Skrenta)

Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 14:34:38 +0000

desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins) writes:
> My personal inclination would be to make it much more difficult for
> units belonging to different factions to cooperate.

I don't think "cooperation" in general is the guilty party.  Rather,
the problem is a harmful subset of cooperation that I call "ganging up".
Combat in Oly, for example, is additive: if you take an army, and add
another army to it, you have a stronger army.

This hoses solitare puzzles such as the NPC monster lairs.  If they are
easy enough for an individual to tackle, then a small alliance can
trivially take them out.  But if they are tough enough to be a challenge
for an alliance, then individuals don't stand a chance.

Similarly, the competitive arena is dominated by alliances, since lone
wolf positions get squashed.  Instead of having to work for a long time
to build up a big army, you just have to get 20 players to work for a
short time.

We don't want to throttle cooperation wholesale, since it's a vital part
of the open-ended game.  There are only two interplayer actions, conflict
and cooperation.  Working with allies is the best part of the open-ended
experience for a lot of players.

The solution, I believe, is to disallow ganging up, while not inhibiting
players from working together.

An example:  Suppose you can train a character into a fighter, thief, or
mage.  Monster quests require a party with one of each.  The same player
can send in three of his own characters, or two or three players can group
together for the quest.

This lets players cooperate but not gang up.  The lone wolf is still viable.
If a particular quest needs a level 10 mage to complete, a room full of
level-2 mages won't do.

Ganging up is often put into the game in the name of "realism" (the
Mephistopheles of game design).  Instead of reasoning from the game's
goal map, one argues that since something can be done in "reality", it
should be possible in the game.  And so short-circuits appear in the
goal map.

The designer should instead think of some excuse to appease Reality, while
leaving the desired limits in place.  Just like in fiction: "Why didn't she
just ask her rich Uncle for the money?"  "Uh, because then the story would
end on page 2.  Hmmm...  Because her rich Uncle believes that she should
make her own fortune, and won't give it to her."  Reality appeased,
essential limit still in place.

In Oly, we could do something like make caves "small", so only a noble
and 4 of his men could fit in to get at the monster.  You'd want to
send in the 4 best men you had, and that +20 sword would be worth taking.

References

Re: Ultimate Goals in Olympia
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Mon, 23 Jan 1995 01:38:13 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Ultimate Goals in Olympia
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Mon, 23 Jan 1995 01:38:13 +0000